Sony Ericsson W910 mobile phone

Filing in at the top end of the company's Wakman range, the W910 is, yes, yet another music phone from Sony Ericsson as part of its Walkman range.

Available in either Hearty Red or Noble Black the W910 is an HSDPA-enabled slider phone that features all the usual stats like Stereo Bluetooth, a built-in digital camera and dedicated music buttons plus a couple of hidden tricks up its sleeve.

As with all sliders, the screen dominates proceedings on the front of the model alongside a series of shortcut and menu keys and following in the footsteps of digital camera makers the phone features an auto rotating screen so you can get the most of out the landscape view when watching video.

In practice and the auto rotate works, but the phone must be vertical and there is a slight delay before the switch.

Moving on to the key and having tried to educate Sony Ericsson users over the last couple of years to the benefits of a dedicated back button instead of following Nokia et al by doubling up the function on the "C" button, Sony Ericsson has made the bold omission that nobody gets the "back" button and so it has been ditched.

Not universal across its range of new handsets, the move will probably confuse previous Sony Ericsson users, but be a welcomed move by newcomers from Nokia, Samsung and other brands.

Slide open the handset, which also features a 2 megapixel camera, and you're presented with an easy to use keypad which doesn't break from the norm. Owners of previous Sony Ericsson handsets won't feel out of touch.

However hidden beneath the exterior, just like the newly announced W580 Walkman handset is a trick just waiting to be used to show off your new model to your mates down the pub; a built-in motion sensor.

Perhaps taking a page out of Nintendo's book, the W910, like the Wii Remote, allows you to move the handset around to achieve certain results.

Press a button and shaking it, not vigorously like a Polaroid picture, will allow you to go forward to the next track or back to the previous one while in the music mode.

In our brief play the feature, which is luckily only turned on when you hold down a button rather than just doing it when its in your pocket, works well but was more of a gimmick than a feature we think we would want day to day.

The Shake functionality extends beyond music - it also adds a new dimension to mobile gaming. If you don't want to use the dedicated gaming buttons, just steer the W910 from left to right to make your move.

Also new to the Sony Ericsson handset is a feature called SensMe. Scanning your music tracks stored on your phone and then analysing the beats of the tracks, the music software allows you to select to play your tracks based on their rhythm.

Options available vary from fast to slow, happy to sad and in our tests worked really well for grouping songs together to put you in a certain mode. We expect fast would be very good for a run for example while sad for those blue rainy days when your really can't be bothered.

The dot matrix visual shows each of your tracks along a horizontal and vertical axis according to their attributes.

So you can circle a group of tracks that match your mood to create a playlist, or simply select individual tunes as you wish.

Other Sony Ericsson software such as the Blogger tool, the ability to find out what tracks you playing via the TrackID are also included as standard.

Our quick take

For those looking for HSDPA connectivity from their music phone the W910 will offer it and a host of other features at the same time.

Those host of other features don't necessarily stand out on there own, but put together to make for a good phone.